Retrieve the Broken
by Steve the Icecube
Summary: Tony and Bruce were kidnapped for three months. They were completely untraceable for that time, and when they were found, completely by accident, they weren't the same...Tony/Bruce
1. Chapter 1

It's just a dream. All of it. We know it.

No one else does. Everyone assures us that it isn't a dream, that this is real and we've been rescued.

We know that we haven't. We gave up that hope so long ago, we know this is just another one of those cruel created realities that aren't real at all, just illusions. They're only ever illusions. They always seem real. We can feel and taste, see, hear.

We always fall in love. That's the point of the tests. They test us over and over with different variables to see if we fall in love. We worked out long ago that they were testing the soul bond theory. Why with us, we have no idea.

We think we thought before that there was nothing different than just partners. Of course, we were a little special, but not with our bond. We thought we were the same as all people who were in love.

But that was before Then.

But we don't remember much of what happened before Then.

We're told all these things about before. Everyone thinks we've been brainwashed, our memories wiped.

We keep trying to tell them that we just spent a long time away, and we aren't sure what is real and what is not anymore. We had things done to us that made the past blur into almost nothing.

We don't exactly know why we bother to resist, try and tell them what actually went on. They're just holograms. Artificial reality.

The artificial reality is a dream. We know because we wake up every time it is over. And we know this isn't real in the sense that things were before.

But we don't really know the difference anymore. It's driving us mad. Well, it would be, if we weren't mad already.

It's making us irritated, then. Yes, irritated.

They keep trying to tell us that this is real.

They keep telling us that the tall blonde person is Steve Rogers, Captain America, and didn't we remember him? How much we argued? And over there, the slightly shorter blonde, that was Clint Barton. Don't you remember teasing him?

There are others that they point out. Natasha Romanoff, and the other redheaded woman who cries whenever she sees us, and whenever we say that we don't remember her. She cries when we flinch away from things, but she always pulls herself together after a couple of sniffles. She always leaves when she sees us standing close together. Her name is Virginia Potts, but she gets upset if we call her anything but Pepper.

Many people look at us with worried looks. Almost everyone. There are a few, Natasha and Clint being two of them, who always keep a straight face when we are around them. It unnerves us because that is what They were like. They had no emotion.

No, They /have/ no emotion. We are still there. Nothing is real except us.

We are Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, the only truly real things in all these crazy worlds we suffer through.


	2. Chapter 2

There were two people in the drug warehouse.

They thought that maybe it was two civilians. That they'd gone to the wrong place, maybe, as there were no drugs to be found. There was an area sectioned off from the main warehouse which served as a cell for two hostages, but both the hostages were out cold, bound together by their hands and ankles, lying on the single bed awakwardly. Their heads were covered by a large blanket which spanned both of their bodies and encompased them. By their size, the agents guessed that they were in their twenties, either that or they were extreme dieters or they had been there with very little food for quite a while.

As they seemed perfectly asleep for the moment, they were left there, the door re-locked as a precaution and a rookie agent posted as a guard outside the door. Then they went on to searching the main part of the room, which was dotted with various torture devices.

Closer inspection got the agents worried. All the devices had been used. Recently, too. There was a metal chair bolted to the ground. Next to it, on a table, lay various knives and razors. Several of these had blood on them.

There was a sick stain on the floor next to an empty table.

There were several mattresses on the floor. Several of these were stained with white splotches. It was fresh.

Everything was dirty. It was as if the occupants of the building had left only half an hour before the agents had gotten there. And apart from a few drugs here and there, there was nothing that the agents had really come for in the first place.

They downloaded a few files which were clearly in code off an old computer. Two files. One was marked 2120, the other 33. Then they went to check on the hostages. They were both still yet to move, and one particularly impatient male agent grabbed the blanket and pulled it away.

"Oh God. Everyone come here _right now_." He commanded. The two hostages were stick thin and sickly pale. It had not been clear through the blanket, but they were pressed closely together. Their clothes were in rags, threadbare and pale. They had no socks nor shoes, and their feet were littered with impressive sores. Any stretch of bare skin was marred with cuts and bruises. As he slept, the very slightly broader man twitched. They appeared to be quite young, maybe twenty five at the oldest, as young as eighteen at the youngest. Their faces were tense.

But it was the features of their faces that this male agent noticed the most.

Because one of the men was the spitting image of Stark when he was just out of college. And the other was clearly a young Doctor Banner.

"Agent Doles, get someone to get a couple of beds ready in medical." One of the agents, Agent Fier, spoke into his earpiece. "We have unexpectedly found and are starting to retrieve Stark and Banner."

Agent Doles made a noise of disbelief. "How bad is it for Stark? I need to give medical a quick rundown."

"Stark _and _Banner have been tortured. Certainly physical and sexual torture. Both have injuries over all visible skin. The Hulk is most likely destroyed considering Banner's condition."

"Okay. Bring them in. Carefully."


End file.
